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Return To Monkey Island - MI2 sequel from Ron Gilbert

asper

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Project: Eternity
To be honest, what personally captivated me from the original MI was the atmospheric pixel art (by Mark Ferrari)

By the way, Mark Ferrari also did some backgrounds for Thimbleweed Park, and they are pretty good: https://www.markferrari.com/recent-artwork

(An awesome gallery with his oldschool work, using pallette cycling: http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/ )

It would have been possible for Ron to hire Mark again for the new MI. It seems he genuinely wants to go into a new direction with the art, sadly.
 
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I had no idea that there were screenshots as well. This is much, much worse than I thought.

I couldn't care less if the game has pixel art or some other art style, but this is truly some of the most atrocious art I have ever seen in a video game. I would expect this from some shovelware title that nobody cares about, but not Monkey Island.

Honestly, some things are just better off staying dead.

Interview with Ron & Dave on adventure gamers + screenshots

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El Presidente

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:M "Hey, what in the FUCK is THAT thing?!"

And they're so proud of this bird they put FIVE of them in the scene :lol: You can't make this shit up
The birds are in the game are incredibly overstylized block creatures, and so much so, that you can't even tell if they are ducks, pigeons or seagulls.

In another scene you have this parrot, which is obviously a parrot. Talk about lack of consistency. :lol:

Neues-Projekt.jpg
 

jfrisby

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Ron reopened comments on the blog:

The reason I closed comments on the other post wasn't because people didn't like the art style, it was that I got tired of deleting comments that were personal attacks on the team or just anger for the sake of anger. You don't have to like the art style but keep in mind you've only seen 4 static screen shots. We have done extensive outside playtesting and the art always threw people for the first hour and by the time they were done, all the art and animation got very high praise. I worry that some people have gotten so worked up that they will rage quit and never give the game a chance. If anyone is calling this crappy flash animation I suggest you go look at some actual crappy flash animation. There is no comparison.
 

negator2vc

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Ron reopened comments on the blog:

The reason I closed comments on the other post wasn't because people didn't like the art style, it was that I got tired of deleting comments that were personal attacks on the team or just anger for the sake of anger. You don't have to like the art style but keep in mind you've only seen 4 static screen shots. We have done extensive outside playtesting and the art always threw people for the first hour and by the time they were done, all the art and animation got very high praise. I worry that some people have gotten so worked up that they will rage quit and never give the game a chance. If anyone is calling this crappy flash animation I suggest you go look at some actual crappy flash animation. There is no comparison.
With every post he make the number of red flags increase !!!!!
 

agris

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And they're so proud of this bird they put FIVE of them in the scene :lol: You can't make this shit up

Of course they did, it’s just a matter of CTL-C, CTL-V. Look, they even let the light layer they put down to show the moon lit road and passage between buildings bisect the cube birds body and part of the head by mistake.

It’s sloppy layer work, because this was made in Illustrator and it shows…

It looks cheap and generic :(
 
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Boleskine

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I worry that some people have gotten so worked up that they will rage quit and never give the game a chance.

:rpgcodex:

He explicitly told people to rage quit if they didn't like the art.

Get on and have some fun or stomp out of the amusement park because it's not exactly the rollercoaster you wanted.
 

Alex

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Comments closed again.

Ron Gilbert 1h ago
I'm closing comments again. They have degrade into personal attacks on Rex, artist and other posters that I am constantly deleting.

Can't he just make comments appear only after approved? I mean, it would still be ignoring the problem, but it at least wouldn't make it seem like he is running away from the backlash.
 

Boleskine

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Comments closed again.
Ron Gilbert 1h ago
I'm closing comments again. They have degrade into personal attacks on Rex, artist and other posters that I am constantly deleting.

Can't he just make comments appear only after approved? I mean, it would still be ignoring the problem, but it at least wouldn't make it seem like he is running away from the backlash.
That'd be sensible, but it's more convenient to direct attention towards the "haters" who allegedly want to stop everyone from having fun. Soon Ron will claim that he and the game are targets of an organized goobergate harassment campaign.

While I get Ron is disappointed the reaction hasn't been overwhelmingly positive, he's often been opinionated and abrasive, declaring this sucks and that sucks. Now that he's on the other end of that it's hilarious how thin-skinned he is.
 

negator2vc

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Comments closed again.
Ron Gilbert 1h ago
I'm closing comments again. They have degrade into personal attacks on Rex, artist and other posters that I am constantly deleting.

Can't he just make comments appear only after approved? I mean, it would still be ignoring the problem, but it at least wouldn't make it seem like he is running away from the backlash.
That'd be sensible, but it's more convenient to direct attention towards the "haters" who allegedly want to stop everyone from having fun. Soon Ron will claim that he and the game are targets of an organized goobergate harassment campaign.

While I get Ron is disappointed the reaction hasn't been overwhelmingly positive, he's often been opinionated and abrasive, declaring this sucks and that sucks. Now that he's on the other end of that it's hilarious how thin-skinned he is.

The irony is what he describe is the action of his fanboys not the people who rightfully complain about the visuals.
Unless he manage to scrub all these "personal attacks" I didn't see any of these at his blog.
On the other hand his fanboys always attack this way when someone "dare" to post a different opinion using mostly the idiotic "not pixelart" argument.
 

Star Citizen

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I had no idea that there were screenshots as well. This is much, much worse than I thought.

I couldn't care less if the game has pixel art or some other art style, but this is truly some of the most atrocious art I have ever seen in a video game. I would expect this from some shovelware title that nobody cares about, but not Monkey Island.

Honestly, some things are just better off staying dead.


Exact same thoughts here, this visual style is total anti-art and I could never look past it, especially when all the other games in the franchise had very detailed, brilliant n vibrant scenes. I myself was skeptical but sort of optimistic at a new MI game but I legit couldn't believe how hideous these screens were, literal puke to look at. Reminiscent of Microsoft Word's clipart or some other soulless corpo marketing shit being a major influence. I really want to know what rocks peeps were smoking when they chose this. It's objectively bad.
 

Infinitron

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IMO if they want to find a workable compromise here, they could keep the background art and only change the style of the characters (including animals, paintings, statues, etc).

The backgrounds are a little bare/sparse in style but wouldn't look so bad with more realistic characters filling them.
 

Parsifarka

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Ron reopened comments on the blog:
We have done extensive outside playtesting and the art always threw people for the first hour and by the time they were done, all the art and animation got very high praise.
Love the candor of this quote: first reaction is to call it out for the trash it is, but extended exposition will demoralize you into submission agreeing that the emperor sports a beautiful dress. Contemporary "art" industry in a nutshell, swallow shit till it tastes good. This is the aesthetic equivalent to eating the bug, and you will be happy.
 

negator2vc

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IMO if they want to find a workable compromise here, they could keep the background art and only change the style of the characters (including animals, paintings, statues, etc).

The backgrounds are a little bare/sparse in style but wouldn't look so bad with more realistic characters filling them.

Unfortunately there was never any chance of that. He even talk about it in his latest post

"I wanted the art in Return to Monkey Island to be provocative, shocking, and not what everyone was expecting."
"If anyone is calling this crappy flash animation I suggest you go look at some actual crappy flash animation. There is no comparison."
"We have done extensive outside playtesting and the art always threw people for the first hour"

He knew what reaction this will get.... These comments of his are even worst than the art itself
This was done on purpose!
 
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negator2vc

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Ron reopened comments on the blog:
We have done extensive outside playtesting and the art always threw people for the first hour and by the time they were done, all the art and animation got very high praise.
Love the candor of this quote: first reaction is to call it out for the trash it is, but extended exposition will demoralize you into submission agreeing that the emperor sports a beautiful dress. Contemporary "art" industry in a nutshell, swallow shit till it tastes good. This is the aesthetic equivalent to eating the bug, and you will be happy.

Wanna quess who will be blamed when RtMi either flops or seriously under perform?
After all adventure games are a niche genre where you can't afford to lose gamers unlike other more popular genres.
 

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